SPECIAL UPDATE: Evolution Opponents on the Offensive
in Senate, House

(Posted 6-19-01)

This update was originally sent out as an e-mail message to AGI's
member societies.

IN A NUTSHELL: A day before the Senate completed action on a
comprehensive education bill that it had debated for six weeks, Sen. Rick
Santorum (R-PA) introduced a two-sentence amendment drafted by evolution
opponents. The amendment, presented in the form of a Senate resolution,
defines "good science education" and encourages teaching the "controversy"
surrounding biological evolution. Amidst a flurry of other amendments,
the Senate voted 91-8 in favor of the provision on its way to passing the
entire bill by the same margin. Earlier, a group of conservative representatives
had stripped a science testing provision out of the House counterpart bill
in part because of concerns that the tests would include evolution-related
questions. Differences between the two bills will be worked out in a House-Senate
conference likely to take place in early July.

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Last summer, proponents of intelligent design creationism held a Capitol
Hill briefing to educate congressional members and staff on the failures
of Darwinism and their alternative proposals (see a summary at http://www.agiweb.org/gap/legis106/id_update.html).
They also lectured their audience on the moral decay that the teaching
of Darwinism had wrought on society. A panel discussion was moderated by
David DeWolf, a law professor at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington
and author of a legal brief on how to get intelligent design into public
school curriculum. Like most of the other speakers at the briefing, DeWolf
is a senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute's Center for
the Renewal of Science and Culture, a conservative think tank dedicated
to promulgating intelligent design as an alternative theory to evolution.

Up until that briefing took place, the political debate over the teaching
of evolution in public schools had taken place at the state and local level,
but the briefing appeared to be a disturbing expansion of anti-evolution
efforts into the federal legislature. That appearance is now reality with
DeWolf and briefing speaker Phillip Johnson, a law professor at the University
of California at Berkeley and CRSC senior fellow, taking center stage.

K-12 Education Bill Used as Vehicle

Education was a campaign priority for President Bush, and the first
bills introduced this year in both the House and Senate (H.R.1 and S.1,
respectively) are comprehensive overhauls of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act of 1965, which covers most federal aid programs for states
and local school districts. S.1, entitled the Better Education for Students
and Teachers Act, was passed by the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions
(HELP) Committee in March, having been introduced by the committee's then-chairman
Jim Jeffords (now I-VT). The full Senate took it up in May with hundreds
of amendments being offered and considered. After the Memorial Day recess
and Jeffords' departure from the Republican Party, debate on the floor
resumed in June with new HELP chairman Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) managing
the debate.

On the morning of June 13th, Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) rose to speak
on his amendment #799, which he handed in the previous evening. It is a
non-binding "Sense of the Senate" resolution, a common tactic used to put
the Senate on record about a given subject without worrying about statutory
implications. According to Santorum, his amendment dealt "with the subject
of intellectual freedom with respect to the teaching of science in the
classroom, in primary and secondary education. It is a sense of the Senate
that does not try to dictate curriculum to anybody; quite the contrary,
it says there should be freedom to discuss and air good scientific debate
within the classroom. In fact, students will do better and will learn more
if there is this intellectual freedom to discuss."He then stated that the
amendment was "simply two sentences--frankly, two rather innocuous sentences."
The amendment reads:

"It is the sense of the Senate that-- "(1) good science education should
prepare students to distinguish the data or testable theories of science
from philosophical or religious claims that are made in the name of science;
and "(2) where biological evolution is taught, the curriculum should help
students to understand why this subject generates so much continuing controversy,
and should prepare the students to be informed participants in public discussions
regarding the subject."

Santorum then went on to read an extended passage by DeWolf lauding
the benefits of "a more open discussion of biological origins in the science
classroom." Although most amendments, especially non-binding ones, are
simply added by unanimous consent or withdrawn without a vote, Santorum
called for a roll call vote to put the Senate on record. Kennedy, the floor
manager, then expressed his support for the amendment. With nobody speaking
against it, the amendment passed by a 91-8 vote. All Democrats voted for
it (except Sen. Chris Dodd, D-CT, who was absent). The eight Republicans
who voted against the amendment (Chafee, RI; Cochran, MS; Collins, ME;
DeWine, OH; Enzi, WY; Hagel, NE; Stevens, AK; Thompson, TN) were opposed
on the grounds that it was an unnecessary federal intrusion in a state
and local matter. The full text of Santorum's remarks from the Congressional
Record are available at http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/R?r107:FLD001:S06148
on pages S6147-48, Kennedy's remarks are on S6150, and supporting statements
by Brownback, R-KS, and Byrd, D-WV, are at S6152.

Whether or not one views the specific language of the amendment as innocuous
or unobjectionable, this vote has become a public relations bonanza for
the intelligent design creationists. The Discovery Institute put out a
press release stating: "Undoubtedly this will change the face of the debate
over the theories of evolution and intelligent design in America. From
now on the evidence will be free to speak for itself. It also seems that
the Darwinian monopoly on public science education, and perhaps on the
biological sciences in general, is ending." The Senate vote is also being
portrayed as a vindication of the 1999 decision by the Kansas Board
of Education to remove evolution from state tests (a vote subsequently
overturned when several of the school board members were defeated in the
2000 elections). Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) told the Washington Times (6-18-01)
that it "cleared the record." In a speech supporting Santorum's amendment,
he argued: "The great and bold statement that the Kansas School Board made
was … simply that we observe micro-evolution and therefore it is scientific
fact; and that it is impossible to observe macro-evolution, it is scientific
assumption.... [Santorum] clarifies the opinion of the Senate that the
debate of scientific fact versus scientific assumption is an important
debate to embrace."

How did this amendment come about? In the same Washington Times article,
Phillip Johnson took credit for helping to frame the amendment's language:
"I offered some language to Senator Santorum, after he had decided to propose
a resolution of this sort." According to his web site, Johnson visited
a number of Capitol Hill offices early in June to meet with senators and
representatives. Johnson is the author of several anti-evolution books,
including "Darwin on Trial," and speaks widely on this subject.

A Broader Offensive

Evolution also came up as an issue in the House education bill, H.R.
1. As passed by the House Education and the Workforce Committee, H.R. 1
included a provision mandating that students be tested on science in addition
to the reading and math testing provisions called for in the original bill
-- a presidential priority. Scientific societies pushed for the testing
provision lest science lose attention as resources are concentrated on
tested subjects.

Before any bill can be considered on the House floor, it must pass through
the Rules Committee, which decides how much debate will be allowed, which
amendments will be in order, and other procedural matters. The committee
can also amend the bill so that what is considered on the floor is different
from what was passed in committee earlier. In response to concerns raised
by a group of conservative lawmakers, the committee (chaired by Rep. David
Dreier, R-CA) removed the science testing provision in this manner. Sources
report that a major reason for the opposition was that testing might include
evolution-related questions.

Although Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-MI) was assured that he would be given
the opportunity to propose a floor amendment restoring the science testing
provision, he was never allowed to do so despite support for his amendment
from Education and the Workforce Committee chairman John Boehner (R-OH).

The Next Step

A House-Senate conference committee must work out differences in the
two bills -- both bodies must vote on an identical measure before it goes
to the president for his signature, which is expected. Conferees have yet
to be named but will surely include senior members of the Senate HELP Committee
and the House Education and the Workforce Committee. Senators Kennedy and
Judd Gregg (R-NH), the senior Republican on the HELP Committee, will certainly
be on it as perhaps will S. 1 author Jeffords. On the House side, Boehner
and ranking Democrat Rep. George Miller (D-CA) will be on it.

In addition to efforts to restore science testing provisions, scientific
societies including AGI are considering options for how to address the
Santorum amendment. Given the clear public rejection of the 1999 Kansas
school board's action, it does not seem likely that the majority of the
senators who voted for the amendment share Brownback's opinion of its implications
or agree with the Discovery Institute that their purpose was to "change
the face of the debate over the theories of evolution and intelligent design
in America." Indeed, faced with such rhetoric, they might just decide that
Santorum presented his "innocuous" amendment to them as something other
than the anti-evolution stalking horse that it truly is.

Special update prepared by David Applegate, AGI Government Affairs
Program